


Observations

by smol_bird



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - No Powers, F/M, M/M, Multi, Natasha Romanov-centric, Spy Natasha Romanov, it’s a high school AU how original, it’s basically natasha’s POV of steve and tony’s relationship, natasha is really bad at personal boundaries but really good at being a spy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 12:04:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13481112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smol_bird/pseuds/smol_bird
Summary: There is a running gag in the Academy, started, as many of them are, by Clint, that in one of the certainly-existing parallel universes Natasha is a spy.————Or: In which Tony renames his computer files, Steve draws, Clint questions, and Natasha is left the observer role, not that she minds at all.





	Observations

There is a running gag in the Academy, started, as many of them are, by Clint, that in one of the certainly-existing parallel universes Natasha is a spy. 

One of those badass Russian spies who carry at least three weapons on them at all time and make their enemies piss themselves in fear with one cold quirk of the lips. One of those rumoured-heartless spies who double as assassins on unpredictable missions and wake up tied to a chair just to smirk to themselves and confirm yet again that everything is going according to plan. One of those clear headed, calculating spies who can find out anything and everything you know about yourself – and then, anything and everything you don’t. It’s a joke, it comes up once or twice a week in irrelevant conversations, and everybody laughs. 

Nat finds it appropriate to joke back, of course. 

That if she is ever a spy, if a universe like that exists among countless others, then Clint is, no doubt, always right there by her side. A voice in an earphone, curtly notifying “All clear!” just to add a few seconds later “And do me a favour, please collect my arrows if you encounter any corpses” (because of course he would use a bow, he has enough medals from competition to prove it). Right there, outside the building Natasha is infiltrating, a getaway driver turned bodyguard turned partner. Right there, ready to shoot or stab or choke anyone who so much as dares to get in his way (“Or even worse, hurt Romanoff,” Tony adds ironically). It’s a logical continuation of a joke, so everybody laughs too. 

But who knows better than Natasha that every joke is only a joke so much?

It’s not like she kills people, of course not. And Clint has been forced to be a getaway only once, when had to (for incredibly convoluted and rarely brought up reasons) sneak into Tony’s house and pass him the cheapest flip phone they could find in a shop so that he could keep in contact that one time he couldn’t otherwise. And she has never yet woken up tied to a chair (thankfully), so that’s another point off the list of achievements she shares with her potential counterpart. But a spy is first of all a spy, not an assassin, and oh, if there is anything spies are meant to be good at, it is, well, spying. 

Clint jokes – and it is a joke. But what isn’t a joke is that Natasha has a folder in her notes, titled simply “Facts”, and that this folder contains ten or so entries, each beginning with a name of an acquaintance she cares for more than she usually would care for people. (This is somewhat a convoluted statement, sure, and Clint would no doubt cross his arms and grin and say “Just call us friends!”, but that seems a bit too much. “Close acquaintances” works just fine).

What isn’t a joke, is that each note is filled with neatly-organised bullet points, clustered together into “Family”, “Origin”, “Habits”, “Traits” and whatever else she can think of, and each note contains enough information to be counted as a full dossier. Of course, she would never give them out to anyone (unless Director Fury asks really nicely for one single bullet point which is completely crucial for him to know, and then promises to turn his quite literal blind eye next time she and Clint miss a lesson for a reason they would rather not explain), but it’s a nice hobby to have. Some people draw (“Steve Rogers”), some take apart and put together laptops and coffee makers (“Tony Stark”), some spend hours in the shooting range (“Clint”), and some just observe and note all of these down. 

It’s kind of creepy, she thinks sometimes. Then again, it’s not like it is a futile practice overall.

It comes in handy. More often than one would imagine, actually, because Stark may boast his ability to remember twelve digit numbers after looking at them for ten seconds, but he always forgets birthdays and small habits and secrets he was told, and Natasha learns to have everything in a neat list right at her fingertips. She knows exactly why Peter can’t go out with them on a Friday night (“It’s his parents’ death anniversary, Thor, stop trying to insist”), remembers to roll pens over across the desk if Stark asks for one (“He doesn’t like being handed stuff, Bucky, lay off a bit”) and brings tea she steals from Professor Coulson’s office to the school science labs on Tuesday lunch breaks (“No problem, Bruce, I know you like camomile”).

It’s a total invasion of privacy, she tells herself, noting down that Pepper Potts has most certainly been flirting with Happy Hogan after classes on Thursday. A complete violation of etiquette norms. 

Her alternative spy self would be so proud. 

She does, however, know what privacy means. She never tries to find out why exactly do Loki and Thor pretend they don’t have an older sister, or why is Bruce so keen on going home as late as possible, or what is the truth behind Bucky’s missing left arm (because a car accident is such an obvious, and obviously-fake, excuse). If someone tells her a fact, she will write it down, if she makes an observation, she will keep record, but some truths aren’t meant to be shared, some guesses aren’t meant to be developed further, and that she learns to respects. Everyone has rights to keep their skeletons in their closets. 

This here situation, however, doesn’t by a long shot fall into a category of such secrets. 

She knows Tony Stark and knows him well enough. She knows his looks and sometimes manages to read his expressions. She learns to understand, most of the times, when his jokes are meant to humour and when – to give a warning shot of “Stay away!”. And she knows full damn well what it means when he suddenly starts giving his computer files names which sound hauntingly like that of someone they know. 

It was Pepper, a few years ago. They were all just freshmen, Natasha knew Clint, and Steve knew Bucky, and Tony knew Potts, and they all stuck with their respective partners for at least the first week, talking in whispers and listening to Professor Coulson the moment he would raise his voice. Back then none of them were yet “close acquaintances”, let alone “friends”, and Natasha only had one note titled with a name, but she still liked to observe. And it so happened once that she got paired up with Stark for a physics research project. 

“I’ll do the work, don’t worry about it,” he grinned at her dismissively back then, getting out his laptop. “I’ll send you the file after I’m done so you aren’t totally oblivious.”

It was the first proper conversation they had and it was an argument about teamwork and splitting tasks, and Nat would think it could have gone a lot better if she didn’t know Tony as well as she does now. Now, of course, she is convinced that the argument was the only reason they ever got along later. 

Regardless, she likes to think she won that fight back then, because Tony grudgingly let her sit next to him as she researched the early life of one Louis de Broglie and he delved deeper into his theories and theses. It was back then that Natasha noticed the titles of the documents on Tony’s laptop screen.

Pepper. Potts. PP. Pep. Peperoni. All the possible variations of the name of their dear classmate who was currently trying to find some common grounds with Loki and not punch him in the face (Nat knew him for a week or so back then, and yet already realised with perfect clarity just what a hard task that was). She looked at the girl, then back at Tony, her typing slowing down for a few moments. 

“Do you always name your computer files after your crushes?” she smiled sweetly. Stark huffed, nudging her in the ribs.

“Do you always stick your nose in other people’s business?” he retorted. “And for the record, we’ve been dating for a year and a half now, so it’s not a ‘crush’.” He made a face, as if simply saying that word out loud physically hurt him. Natasha laughed, and that was that.

However, today, after school on a Thursday afternoon when she suddenly finds herself in possession of Tony’s laptop, unlocked and vulnerable, no doubt simply forgotten on the desk in the history department, she can’t help but peak at the filenames curiously (because, come on, who would blame him for still liking Pepper, even if they had as civil of a breakup as Nat could imagine). Yet instead she finds something drastically different.

“Stevennnn.docx”, teases a recent Word document, a few hundred kilobytes in size. “SGR.exe”, another program boldly announces, just a few files down. “capitainfuckingrogers.jpg”, a screenshot is titled. 

Natasha blinks.  
Okay, so let’s pretend missing something as blatantly obvious wouldn’t disappoint her spy counterpart too much. Because Stark looks at Steve, sure, _looks_ at him, but she never even considered–

Of course, that is the moment when Tony chooses to burst into the room, slamming the door against the wall as he looks around.

“Hey, Nat, have you seen my–" he begins and grins in relief when he does in fact spot his laptop in her hands. “Oh, thanks, I knew I left it somewhere! You – wait. What have you been looking at?”

His eyes go narrow. Natasha can tell that he is running through endless possibilities in his mind and lets herself wonder for a brief moment what else would she be able to find if she kept the laptop any longer, then shrugs with a little smirk, closes the lid and puts it on the surface of the desk in front of Tony. 

“Nice filenames,” she comments. “So have you and Steve been dating for a year and a half now? Or is this indeed a _crush_?”

She probably shouldn’t feel as much enjoyment watching Tony groan in dismay and sink onto the chair next to her, but there we are. 

***

“Clint, you will be delighted to hear that I am a terrible spy,” she announces over the phone that night, and then, because she is ‘mean like that’, doesn’t explain how exactly she reached that conclusion. Clint keeps guessing for at least an hour but never even comes close to the actual answer, and at least Natasha’s inner voice can be consoled by the fact that it really isn’t an obvious thing. 

*** 

Except now that she knows about it, it is.

Tony keeps giving her stern gazes before class because she watches him from under half-closed eyelids, and when Steve enters the room, giving everyone a bright smile as a greeting and dropping his backpack on the seat next to Stark’s, has to bite her lip to stop herself from commenting. Because she knew Tony looks, of course, but she always assumed a different context. A “hey you’re my classmate and we get along reasonably well whenever we don’t get into another argument over something insignificant, but I’m still not sure whether I can call you my friend” kind of context. Not a “hey you’re my classmate and I totally have a crush on you” kind.

Tony is already teasing Steve about something, but growls quietly and gives Natasha a pointed look when she tilts her head, trying to interpret their usual morning interactions in the new light. She offers him the sweetest smile she can manage and Stark scoffs, then bumping his head against the table. Steve raises his eyebrows:

“Is everything alright?”

“Natasha is the devil,” Tony mumbles, barely looking up. Romanoff laughs and leans over across her desk, ruffling his hair in consolation:

“I’m not that terrible, Stark.” 

“Sure you aren’t,” he sighs in exaggerated despair before sitting back up and offering everyone a somewhat tired smile. “Oh well, at least you are the devil who can keep secrets.”

Clint perks up, opening his mouth to comment, but Natasha silences him with a quick gaze and grins back at Tony, leaning against her chair:  
“Yeah, at least that.” 

She pretends not to notice how Steve furrows his brows in worry, giving her a cautious look before returning to his conversation with Tony. And Stark, she thinks, genuinely doesn’t see his expression. Huh.

***

“Hey, what was that thing about in the morning?”

Steve stops Natasha in the hallway on her way to lunch. She raises one eyebrow in that expression which reads “I know exactly what you mean but I will pretend I don’t” and leans against the wall.  
“What thing?”

“Oh please,” Steve sighs. “You know what I’m talking about. That thing with Tony. What happened?”

“Are you worried about him?” she grins charmingly, eyes narrow as she studies his expression. Steve looks away, shrugging in dismissal:

“I always worry about people, you know that.”

“I do,” she hums. “But it’s nothing you should concern yourself over. Right now it’s between Tony and I. He was right about one thing, I do keep secrets.”

“Yeah, I know, it’s just…” Steve rubs the back of his neck awkwardly, looking around the empty corridor. The bell has rung at least ten minutes ago, and most of their fellow classmates were probably already in the dining hall, eating lunch, gossiping about teachers and wondering where they were. “It’s Tony, you know? He keeps everything a secret, and if it’s something serious, well, it would be nice if I could help.”

Natasha raises her eyebrows further. 

“Why do you care?” she asks bluntly, looking Steve in the eyes (which requires a good deal of looking up). “I mean, no offence, but I wouldn’t say you and Tony get along too well.”

“You don’t know that,” he shrugs easily, then sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Anyways, I won’t pry, but it’s evident you know something I don’t, and I was wondering if it’s anything worthy of concern.”

“Hardly,” Natasha shakes her head. Steve nods in hesitant satisfaction, and a few minutes later they’re already sitting in the dining hall with Bruce, Thor and Pepper (everyone else has their lunch break the next period), and that is that. Except it really kind of isn’t.

Steve, Natasha thinks, was always easier to read than Tony. He didn’t grow up in a household which had cameras pointed at it every minute of the day, he didn’t need to learn to hide his emotions and feelings from strangers who are all too eager to reach into his head and find a scoop about his father, he didn’t have a whole set of fake smiles he would give after sleepless nights or in response to questions he wouldn’t want to answer. Tony was their age and yet at times seemed to be much older, calculated appearances and perfectly-timed responses. Sometimes he would even slip into the “perfect kid of a perfect parent” mode around them, and that startled, and that made him a blank, unreadable slate. 

Steve is the exact opposite.

If he is upset, he fidgets with his fingers and evades eye contact and bites his bottom lip. If he is angry, he crosses his arms and narrows his eyes and speaks in curt phrases. If he is happy, he smiles and giggles for no reason and allows his shoulders to relax. He is an open book for anyone who spent so much as a few weeks studying him, and again, if there is anything Natasha likes doing, it is studying people to a point where she knows exactly what does it mean when they run their hand through their hair or lightly bite their knuckles. 

And yet.

It is always a possibility that she sees what she wants to see. Twists facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts. But that would make her a godawful detective and just the worst spy, so she tries to keep as objective as possible, noting down phrases and observations as she follows Steve with a thoughtful gaze. Takes notice of the worried looks he throws at Stark; pretends not to hear questions of “Are you alright, Tony?”. Because Steve always cares, of course, but she didn’t exactly know him to care as much. So was there – could there have been..?

Upon the answer she stumbles entirely by accident on a Wednesday afternoon. 

Natasha is sitting on the desk in the art department, trying to shade a drawing of a vase with some fruits and throwing distracted gazes around, focusing anywhere but the object of her picture. She has a lot of talents, she’s been told, but art has never been on that list, and her attempts could probably be compared with those of a fifth grader. (The latter would still be superior).

And Steve is there too, standing opposite a canvas, a palette in his left hand and a paintbrush in his right, creating a deep forest on the white cotton. He isn’t doing it for a grade, he is at the top of the class already, he just loves to get lost among brushstrokes and the toxic smell of oil paints Tony got him as a birthday present last Fourth of July. Natasha watches him paint more than she draws, because there is something entrancing in the way Steve creates his pictures, mixing different colours on his palette, the back of his hand or the canvas itself, but occasionally she turns to her own sketch too, trying to fix the shaky lines at least a little and find a good technique for drawing shades. 

She gives up within half an hour. If you can’t do something yourself, look at how someone else has done it and try to copy it to the best of your ability. Probably not the best life advice, but it gets her the grades, so why not stick to it, Natasha decides, looking up at Rogers once again.

“Steve, can I borrow your sketchbook?” she asks. 

He nods distractedly and pushes a small black notebook towards her, barely turning away from his painting for half a second. Natasha picks it up and opens in a random place, hoping to come across some still life study she could imitate sufficiently, but instead just ends up staring at the charcoal sketch in front of her for a moment before exhaling in delayed surprise. 

She knew, of course, that Steve Rogers has two sketchbooks, identical in everything but the contents. One is for school, for studies and plans, he shows it to friends and gets it graded and drags around with him all day if they are to have an art lesson later. She’s looked inside that one countless times before, admiring the fruits and landscapes and occasional blurred, but not at all familiar, figures. It’s a typical attribute of a typical artist, and it’s not at all surprising that he would own something like that.

But then he also has another one, and that one is personal. Personal in a sense in which diaries are personal, because Steve isn’t always good with words but he is good with sketches, and if he needs to express himself, he does it through art. He draws dreams and nightmares, particularly striking images and particularly deep thoughts, and laughs nervously if someone asks if they could see. And that one Natasha has never looked into, recognizing the personal boundaries Rogers clearly set, and despite her curiosity, she wouldn’t mind to keep it that way, because everyone has rights for secrets. 

But well. 

“Steve?” Natasha asks cautiously, her eyes skimming over the figure on the page again. It is Tony, no doubts about that, sitting on the desk in the physics classroom and tinkering with a Geiger counter, and Natasha can even remember when this happened – just a few months ago, in October. It wasn’t an unusual scene nor was it memorable in any particular way, but the sketch seemed alive, no less, as if the charcoal Tony was about to look up at her and comment on her bewildered face expression in his usual sarcastic manner. It seemed alive, heart and soul poured into black strokes outlining Tony’s messy hair and rolled up sleeves, and oh, _oh_ , now this was saying something. “You are aware that you gave me the wrong sketchbook… right?”

Steve’s brush freezes against the green of the painted leaves for a moment before he remembers to move it away, then turning around slowly, his expression taut. He casts a short gaze down at the notebook in Natasha’s hands, then exhales pathetically, setting his palette down onto the desk. 

“Oh _shit_.”

Well, any situation which makes the goody-two-shoes Steve Rogers cuss is a good situation in Natasha’s books. 

***

“You wanna know something else, Clint? I am _the worst_ spy,” she declares that night, draped across the couch in Barton’s living room as he is looking for a cliché rom-com for them to fall asleep to, snuggling closer to each other. He turns around, finally picking a CD case out of his extensive collection, and gives her a pointed look:

“You gotta stop with your cryptic shit, Tasha.”

Nat only grins wider in response. 

***

Natasha likes being the most observant one among her acquaintances. She would very much like it to stay that way, actually – it’s always good when nobody knows just how much you know about them. However, in this case it does pose a rather serious problem. That being: if it took _her_ this long (however long “this long” might be) to notice that Steve and Tony are pathetically crushing on each other and refusing to do anything about it, and even then she only reached such conclusions through a series of unpredictable accidents rather than her own observation skills, then how long could it possibly take those two to realise?!

She groans, bumping her head on the desk. Half the class turns to her immediately. 

“You okay there?” Bucky laughs as Clint pokes the back of her neck gently. Natasha flips both of them off before looking up:

“I’m having a dilemma here, boys. Have some respect.”

“Does that have something to do with you being a terrible spy?” Barton raises one eyebrow. Nat sees from the corner of her eye how Tony squints and gives her a warning gaze before focusing his attention on Pepper again, and how Steve looks up from his notebook, attempting to mask his little flinch, and barely manages to supress an urge to groan again. 

“Everything,” she sighs, face expression resigned. “And there’s very little I could do to resolve it.” 

Professor Coulson walks in that exact moment so nobody else has time to ask her anything, but she keeps feeling pointed glares throughout the lesson, and it really doesn’t help to concentrate. 

Well, she supposes there is _something_ she could try.

***

“Hey Steve?”

“Yes, Natasha?”

“Did you know that if Stark has a crush on people, he names computer files after them?”

“And I needed to know that because?..”

“Just a fun fact.”

***

“Hey, Tony?”

“What’s up?”

“Did you know Steve draws the people he likes? Why do you think he is so secretive with his personal sketchbook? It’s full of old crushes and whatnot.”

“…I hate you.”

“I know.” 

***

“Professor Coulson, could you do me a favour?”

“Hello, miss Romanoff. Depends. What do you need?”

“Sir, next time we have any long pair project, could you please make sure Stark and Rogers are paired up?”

The teacher gives her a long tired gaze before shrugging and looking back down at his journal. 

“If you think that’ll help.”

Natasha blinks, then wonders if Coulson would be a spy too.

***

Two weeks past with very little development. They go to a cinema one Sunday and then skip PE to go to an ice rink, Clint drags her to a shooting gallery and makes her practice her crossbow skills as he struggles with a gun, and everything is as normal as it gets. And normal means school, and school means homework, and so they suddenly have to research a Greek tragedy for English Literature which barely makes any sense, and Professor Hill gets to choose their partners which is just entirely unfair, but Nat gets paired up with Pepper so she isn’t really complaining. 

“Hey Rogers?” Tony calls out from across the rooms. “Seems you’re stuck with me! Wanna come over on the weekends?”

And _oh_ , Natasha realises, having to bite on the inside of her cheek to stop herself from smirking, Coulson is just the best. 

***

They come back to school on Monday and overall Nat thinks that weekends went just fine. Pepper and her got more than half of their project done, Clint didn’t whine too much about being paired up with Thor who has a completely different set of work ethics and ideas about what their presentation should look like, she got a reasonable amount of sleep at night – overall, it’s as good as it could be. So right now she is sitting at her desk in quiet content, scrolling through a news article as Barton is playing some platformer, humming along to a song in his earphones, and the world is at peace. 

Before, as it often happens, Tony Stark makes an entrance. 

He opens the door and marches in and greets everyone with too wide of a smile; and even Pepper quirks her eyebrows in slight confusion as to what could have caused such excitement. Natasha looks up from her phone carefully, giving Tony an accessing gaze, and as he catches her eyes, hopping up to sit on top of his table and fidgeting with his collar, she has very little doubts left. 

“Romanoff, you are the best!” he announces loudly. Clint tilts his head. Pepper’s eyebrows shoot up even further. Natasha smiles:

“I know.”

And that’s when Steve comes in, all soft smiles and ironed uniform and twinkles in his eyes, and Tony gives him the brightest grin he is capable of, his voice ringing with joy as he says,

“Morning, Steve.”

“Morning, Tony,” Rogers replies in a much similar tone as he walks up to the desk and presses a soft kiss against Tony’s cheek, then throwing a challenging gaze around, ‘fight me if you have something against this.’

“Oh my god.” Pepper says flatly from the desk behind them. And then, “Finally.”

“Took you a while!” Bucky hoots from next to Nat and Clint.

“Congratulations,” Bruce smiles kindly from the first row, resting his chin at the back of his chair. 

Natasha blinks. Then blinks again. Clint gives her a strange gaze. 

“Is this why you’ve been commenting on your spy skills lately?” he asks quietly as everyone else seems too preoccupied with demanding details from Tony and Steve, who mutter something about computer files, charcoal drawings and red headed Russians. Romanoff nods ironically:

“I mean, clearly so.”

“You know,” he hums, glancing back at the pair in front of them for a second before turning an unreadable gaze to back Nat and running his hand through his hair, “if you think not noticing _their_ crushes makes you a bad spy, then I have news for you.”

And… alright. Natasha might need to reconsider her future career choices.

**Author's Note:**

> [my tumblr if you want to visit!](small-birdie.tumblr.com)


End file.
